Community communication went out asking for fiscal year end contributions, outlining the accessibility funding status, spending strategy, submitting tickets, audit requests
Accessibility issues can be reported as tickets to be addressed in future releases. If institutions perform accessibility scans, they are welcome to share those results with Tim. But, to ensure issues are resolved more rapidly, we recommend creating tickets.
Priority for the next FY's focus for the Development Fund?
What's next for DSpace? Could priorities for 9.0 be (partially) funded via Development Fund?
We will start discussions in the next Leadership meeting.
Kristi, Maureen
3
10 min
Financials
Quarterly Financial Report sent via email
Laurie
4
10 min
Budget
DSpace Proposed FY24-25 budget sent via email for discussion and Leadership approval
Breakout listening sessions on pain points and sub-optimal processes in the operations of DSpace Governance facilitated by members of the DSpace Governance WG
Community communication went out asking for fiscal year-end contributions, outlining the accessibility funding status, spending strategy, submitting tickets, audit requests
Accessibility issues can be reported as tickets to be addressed in future releases. If institutions perform accessibility scans, they are welcome to share those results with Tim. But, to ensure issues are resolved more rapidly, we recommend creating tickets.
Additional funds may be applied to a VPAT or an audit.
Priority for the next FY's focus for the Development Fund?
What's next for DSpace? Could priorities for 9.0 be (partially) funded via the Development Fund?
We will start discussions for priorities for DSpace going forward in the next Leadership meeting.
Financials
Quarterly Financial Report
Fiscal year starts in July1 through June 30. This quarterly report is for the third quarter of the fiscal year.
Retained net assets are funds we've saved from previous fiscal years.
Current net assets are revenues that are currently being spent during the fiscal year and will fluctuate depending on expenses to date. Any remaining funds at the end of the fiscal year will go to the retained net assets.
For this report, revenue is ahead of expectations at this point in the year.
Expenses are less than expected for year-to-date so the indirect cost rate (IDC) is also lower than expected.
More information about SCOSS is available, if interested. We are entering the third year of the three-year campaign. The SCOSS funds can continue to be used after the end of the campaign.
Budget
DSpace Proposed FY24-25 budget sent via email for discussion and Leadership approval
Proposed budget approved by Steering May 7th
Proposal creates a reserve fund.
Use of reserve fund is not yet defined. Steering and leadership would approve use of the funds.
Would be helpful to designate as either a rainy day fund or if it is a project development fund.
If there is a remainder in the year's budget, does it automatically go into a reserve fund or retained as net assets. Would need to determine and designate how to apply the funds.
Memberships are a variable in the budget revenue. A Reserve fund would help to counter declines in memberships or other revenue.
Some programs use a dollar amount, others use a percentage of their budget.
Line item for paid development
Due to some members not in attendance, the proposed budget will be a vote via email.
DSpace 8 testathon was completed last month. It found lots of bugs that are currently being patched. More than expected. More testers to verify bug fixes are always needed.
Compliance - federal/funder mandates (e.g. open access)
Impact tracking - Reporting on repositories
Discoverability of repositories
Catch up with developments in the Scholarly ecosystem - diamond OA, COAR notify
Increased harvesting/indexing/bots affecting performance and statistics
Large Language Models (LLMs) training for AI purposes
Big performance issues at the infrastructure end. It is not a DSpace software issue
Good bots changing behaviours in terms crawl rates
Impact of AI Bots
Concerns around bots / harvesters not respecting content licensing, CORE was mentioned
Expanded uses of repositories, beyond traditional uses such as collection management
Increased costs of supporting the repository infrastructure
Equity of access
Taking advantage of AI technologies
AI and accessibility: improving our content in terms of accessibility
AI tools: automated metadata translation
Enhancing DSpace support for handling large content. Many DSpace repositories are increasingly taking research datasets.
Additional topics suggested:
How does DSpace compare to other repository products on the market?
Is research data a direction DSpace should move toward?
Have the core use cases changed?
What are the core use cases? These help to drive our software development.
Last look at use cases was several years ago. Possibility to revisit.
In Europe, merger of CRIS and repositories has become a core use.
DSpace is promoted as a turn-key repository system. DSpace 7 is more difficult to implement and may require more resources, including service provider support.
Performance is a real issue. How to speed it up so people can get into it easier?
Need for training and documentation to help ease customizations. Some documentation is missing or outdated. Who is able and has the time to donate to documentation.
Need for simpler documentation for user side. DCAT has provided some user facing documentation. If institutions are creating their own documentation, please consider adding to DCAT https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSDOC7x/Learning+DSpace
Plan to develop DSpace as a preservation system. What is the status?
Strong interest, but slow going. Staffing is not in place. May need to add a consultant. Feedback from community is needed.
Holger can assist with setting priorities including leading a Q&A after next release.
Currently reviewing the MOU with Lyrasis. Review of the MOU was timed for May 2024. The Working Group is reviewing. May. Looking for proposed revisions or adjustments based on experiences the last three years.
Working Group is considering pain points and challenges in leadership
Including elections and balloting issues
Transition times for officers
Communications and reporting responsibilities between leadership and steering
Documentation of leadership roles and responsibilities
Preparation for new bylaws and code of conduct
Breakout rooms hosted by DSpace Governance Working Group members
Breakout listening sessions on pain points and sub-optimal processes in the operations of DSpace Governance facilitated by members of the DSpace Governance WG
Debrief
Onboarding process for leadership needs to be better on how governance is working. Also needs to be clearer to border membership in future bylaws.
Additional orientation meetings for leadership outside of the quarterly meetings and the orientation for new members could be useful.
Need for transparency and clarity for elections at different membership levels.
Wide ranging community – need participation from orgs/people who are not capital M members
Each fall we lose time with the chair transition
Orientation on how governance works
Debrief with leadership members on how they felt they contributed
Frequency of leadership meetings may result in members not feeling included, especially if they miss a meeting.
Difficult to find and fill leadership roles for leadership and steering groups
Town halls and advisory meetings could help drive new leadership
Leadership shifted to quarterly to give time for subcommittee groups; has not worked in practice. Idea to shift to every other month.
